Hello my friends. Welcome back to the Healthy Eating for Busy Women podcast. I’m so happy that you’re here with me today and you can learn how to make healthy eating a bit easier. So, it requires less of your time and effort.
If you’re new here, then what I want you to know is I help women become naturally healthy eaters. Typically, women who identify as high performing or type a I know all too well what it feels like to have hustled healthy eating for a very long time where you’re either perfectly on track with it or you are just completely off track where you’re overeating, emotional eating, all the things. So, I want you to find that balance and […0.4s] really becoming a naturally healthy eater. What that means is learning how to eat healthy the way nature intended because we’ve really gotten away from this in our current taste society. In my humble opinion, we have relied on effort and knowledge and exertion to make healthy eating decisions. When really our body has everything, it needs to tell us all the things in terms of eating healthy and reaching your ideal. So that is what I help you do. And today’s episode is gonna be a really great palette cleanser for those of you who are looking to have a refresh with the way you eat and become that naturally healthy eater. And if you’ve been with me for a long time and you know my work, this is also gonna be a good refresher for you to really see where you’re at and to see if you’re on the right path to develop naturally healthy eating skills.
So today we’re going to talk about what to expect when you stop dieting, but you still wanna lose weight, you still wanna see results. I think […0.7s] dieting is a loose term. I have some clients who come to me, and they identify as having dieted in the past.
I certainly did. And then I have some clients who say, well, you know, I’m not really a dieter. I just don’t feel like I consistently eat healthy, which is also fair.
What I want you to know just to simplify all of this is we can use the term dieting to describe an experience of healthy eating that doesn’t feel like yours. And what I mean by that is a diet can be loosely described as a set of food rules that someone else created that you are blindly following because you think you should. So, it’s not that anything about those food rules or protocols are wrong per se. It’s just we’ve outsourced are knowing and our decision making to some outside plan because we think it’s the right thing to do. There’s nothing morally wrong with this, but […0.4s] this does not allow you to build up your resourcefulness when it comes to healthy eating. So really you do not learn how to master naturally healthy eating when you have focused on outsourcing this. So, we can consider a diet using this context to mean protocols, plans tracking, maybe even a specialist you’ve hired, or you’ve worked with in the past, who you didn’t make your own decisions based on what your body was telling you. And that’s what I really wanna help you get back to.
So, if you decide, I don’t wanna diet anymore, I just want this to feel natural. What I hear from that is that you want to learn how to really do this yourself, where you always have the answers, you need to eat healthy. And you can do this at any time in any circumstance. You never have to depend on knowing the right foods to eat or having the right plan or the perfect protocol or perfection. You just want it to feel […0.5s] useful.
Alright, so if you do describe yourself as a dieter, what I will say is you probably also notice an all or nothing pattern with food, right? So you notice you either are following through with the healthy eating things perfectly, or […0.4s] it’s just not even in your brain space at all. You’re focusing on other things in your life, the circumstances, stress, kids, spouse, whatever, and you’re either doing it at 100% or you’re not doing it at all.
This is a direct by product of […0.5s] dieting or relying on micromanagement to make healthy eating decisions.
So, this is the first thing I want you to expect if you decide to stop dieting, yes, you can lose weight. You can create the results you want more efficiently from all of the evidence.
I’ve seen coaching hundreds of women. However, you’re going to have to understand that you will no longer be able to rely on outsourcing the knowing 2 plans, protocols, or diets. You are going to have to come up with your own answers. And what’s really interesting is the women I tend to work with tend to be very type a, very intelligent, very ambitious, much like I always was.
It’s interesting in the area of healthy eating how trained we are to outsource our knowing, shoo the plans and protocols.
Because a really base level skill that the women in my coaching program need to develop from the beginning is how to start coming up with their own answers. It’s really uncomfortable.
It feels foreign and it doesn’t quite feel stable in the beginning because these are women like me and probably like you who just haven’t worked that muscle where it feels safe to do that, to not rely on a plan or someone else telling you exactly what to eat and how much of it and what to do at all times.
That’s really what I want you to expect is it’s gonna feel easier. It’s gonna feel more accessible, but also, you’re gonna have to deliberately […0.5s] let it be more accessible because coming up with your own answers resourcefully is gonna be hard. And I want you to expect your brain to have resistance to that.
One of the biggest lies we’ve ever been told as humans or women in modern day society is that anyone else knows better than us as to how we should eat healthy.
Alright. So, the moment we decided to outsource that knowing of what we should eat, we chipped ourselves. We really set ourselves up for failure because if you’re here with me and nothing you’ve tried has worked in the past, it’s because none of those things were your […0.4s] way.
There was a gap in each of those protocols or plans that didn’t fit you and how you wanted to eat healthy. A lot of you might be thinking, well, what if I just don’t wanna eat healthy? I just wanna eat processed foods and sweets all day long.
And listen, I hear you, I have been there, I am the biggest foodie. If you are my client, […0.4s] you know this. I talk about it all the time, but what I want you to understand is if you’re listening to this podcast, you already want to eat healthy, even if you don’t always feel like eating healthy. That’s a different thing. You want to eat healthy; you want to create the results with your body that you prefer, and you wanna feel healthy, that is enough. If you don’t feel like eating healthy all the time, or you’re having urges to emotionally eat, or you’re not making those eating decisions. There’s just a gap that hasn’t been filled that allows you to eat healthy in a way that requires less […0.5s] effort. So, I hope that makes sense.
A big question that y’all come to me with is if I’m not following a plan, a protocol, or I’m not tracking, then what am I doing day to day in order to lose weight or eat healthy? Here’s how I always want you to see it.
First, the most evolved form of naturally healthy eating is when you master those skills enough where you don’t need to make eating decisions until the moment they occur.
Okay, and I’ll say that again, naturally healthy eating is not having to make any eating decisions until the moment they occur. We can consider this the polar opposite of dieting, but I want you to really hear me when I say eating healthy happens in a single moment based on the decisions you make with food and how you eat those foods. You do not need to plan ahead of time. You don’t need to track anything; you do not need to incessantly look for a protocol that’s going to work for you when we gain weight or lose weight or feel healthier or don’t feel as healthy. It’s because of decisions we make in a microsecond when food enters our mouth. And what if the only thing that needed to change is the way you eat food now while you’re eating it, not micromanaging all of your external circumstances. So, you feel more in control when you decide to eat healthy, naturally you are doing a lot less doing.
So many clients who start working with me, it’s a little bit […0.6s] of a shock factor at first, I think because there’s not a lot of busy work, there’s not a lot of energy that they need to put in.
And I’ll say most of you who come and work with me and master the skills I teach, you know, you wanna spend less suffer with healthy eating.
It almost feels like a shock when you come in. And not a lot of busy work is required to see results because it’s really foundational skill building like stress regulation and listening to your body cues and making eating decisions in a moment. But there’s not prepping or planning or tracking.
So that’s just to say, if you have the question, if I’m not dieting, then what am I actually doing?
That question in itself implies that you believe that doing an effort is what will create your results. And what if it’s the opposite? What if all of the doing is what’s burning you out because it’s taking way more energy than should ever be required for you to have the results you want.
And doing includes things like planning, tracking, ruminating about what you’re gonna eat next, even just emotional stress and high cravings, that’s gonna take a lot of your energy. If all of that was solved for how much energy would you be left with for the other things in your life?
That, that is what naturally healthy eating was supposed to feel like. Another really fair question is, am I still gonna lose weight without a plan, without always knowing what my eating decisions gonna be?
What you will also need to understand about naturally healthy eating and finding a manner of healthy eating that’s gonna last is you’re going to have to experiment, and experimenting is vulnerable because what do we need to do in order to experiment?
We need to do trial and error. We’re going to need to do things wrong in order to learn what makes us tick, and we’re going to have to fail. And really when we rely on a strict plan, it’s not that that’s morally wrong or not effective. It can work.
But then what are we left with when we don’t have the plan or the circumstances change and we can’t follow the plan, or we’re done with the plan, and we don’t wanna eat those things anymore. You are left resourceless because you do not know how to eat naturally healthy in order to lose weight.
You’re going to have to learn how to change your behaviors with food and learn those skills through true trial and error. And you’re gonna have to be willing to be bad at these things at first.
One really concrete example I can give you is the skill of not emotionally eating. When you are learning how to not emotionally eat, you are learning how to not eat in response to your stress and instead only eat when you are naturally hungry. Natural hunger feels like a tap on the shoulder, and it never feels urgent.
Emotional hunger feels like a shove, and it just feels like you’ve gotta have it.
When you are first learning the skill, you’re gonna have to really understand over time what’s your emotional hunger and what’s your actual hunger?
You’re gonna mess this up in the beginning. You’re going to eat something because you really thought you were hungry and then you realized you overate and you totally didn’t need that food. And we need that data for you to understand what to look out for moving forward.
But notice that you don’t get to learn any of these lessons if you’re just set on following a protocol. And here’s what I’ll say because this is really valid, following a plan or a protocol is gonna be really satisfying.
I love plans and protocols. I promise you, if that worked effectively for the results you want, I would definitely teach that. What it doesn’t allow you to do is to do this on your own naturally without effort.
If you want to keep relying on plans and protocols to make healthy eating decisions; by all means, but if you’re here, it’s likely that you’ve tried that approach and there’s a point when it stops working for you because life happens. You’re going to have unexpected food choices around you. The kids are gonna want something different. It’s gonna be messy.
Life is messy. So, we cannot make the mistake of thinking we can indefinitely follow a protocol to succeed. Another question I get is how do I stay motivated and on track without dieting or without having this really concrete method for eating healthy?
I think one of the most common misconceptions I see is that to have a plan or a diet means having more structure around healthy eating. That actually isn’t true. It’s not having more structure; it’s putting in more […0.5s] effort. It’s actually giving you less options for healthy eating.
This mentality is something I call the mentality of a team coach in my Own Your Eating Habits membership.
So, we have different personas that we play with to help you understand the different mindsets of healthy eating. And there’s one identity called the team coach. And what the team coach thinks is that it knows the answers for healthy eating and that it just needs to do them, right. So, we’ve all been there.
It’s when we pride ourselves on being highly logical and we think, yeah, 2+ 2= 4, I know 2+ 2= 4, so I just need to find the two, find the two and then it’s gonna equal 4. I just need to do it.
What’s really important to understand about the team coach is because it’s so focused on the right way. It actually is making a mistake.
It’s not being the most logical. It’s really just attached to knowing how the results gonna be created. Because I want you to think about if you’re in that mentality of knowing that 2+ 2= 4, you’re not even gonna look for the options were 3+ 1= 4.
That is what dieting keeps you from, are the options for naturally healthy eating or creating weight loss that actually work better for you, feel easier or more in line with what you wanna do. But you really see a right and wrong with healthy eating.
So, you tunnel vision and think I just need to make 2+ 2= 4 when really […0.5s] three plus 1 is gonna equal 4 for you.
Alright, so I hope this analogy makes sense, but […0.4s] you cannot be in that team coach dieting mentality of thinking there’s one right way and be resourceful. You cannot have both. You need to be able to resourcefully make healthy eating decisions as best as you can in any environment.
So that means we’ve gotta start melting away this mentality that you’ve got to do this one specific, […0.8s] one thing I can say if you decide to work with me, and most of you more than are willing to do this is you’re gonna have to be open minded to what you don’t know yet.
I think most of you who join me in my membership, we really are such a good fit in our community cause we’re always very curious. Most of you love to learn.
It’s really a lot of fun for you to start playing with. If 2+ 2 doesn’t equal 4 with healthy eating, then what’s my 3+ 1 that’s actually gonna work for me. So, to get back to that original question, like how do I stay motivated and knowing I’m doing it right by following a plan really?
In my program, for example, we have real metrics that we can follow, so there is a way to measure progress that doesn’t require a ton of effort and for you to restrict yourself to one specific way of creating this result. In my membership, we’re all scientists and we all experiment with what works and what doesn’t.
But then we do monthly evaluations together to […0.6s] what is working for us and what isn’t.
So, you can start to craft your individual manner of healthy eating. What I find with a lot of people who diet myself in the past included, is we’re really attached to certainty before taking action. And the shift to make if you wanna stop dieting, become a naturally healthy eater and lose weight more effectively, is to stop needing to feel certain and instead focus on feeling curious and resourceful. If instead of certainty, you find curiosity and resourcefulness just as stable for you, then you’re going to create results in a way that feels really good. But don’t wait to feel certain about how you’re gonna create this result in order to create it.
I can tell you that if you master the skills of naturally healthy eating where you stop emotionally eating, you honor your body cues, you eat healthy in a way that feels pleasurable, but you’re not over indulging, you’re gonna reach your ideal weight and you’re going to be able to have the results you want.
The way in which you adapt those skills in your life and make them work, that’s up to us to see when you actually start building those skills. Don’t be attached to certainty. Instead start getting into your curiosity and resourcefulness and then taking action from there.
So, another valid question I get is how do I know it’s working if I’m not measuring everything or I’m not following a diet?
This is kind of similar to the previous question where […0.5s] you may think that not dieting is a lack of stability, but really all you’re doing when you stop dieting is you’re swapping surface level skills like planning and tracking and perfection, honestly, with more deeper skills of healthy eating like regulating your stress and honoring body cues and actually understanding your food preferences. What we’re really doing is we’re not stopping you from being deliberate in this area of your life, but we’re actually just no longer solving for the symptomatic problems of this area. And we’re instead getting to the root problems which is […0.4s] why you eat the way you do, not what you eat or how much you eat.
I think that’s a really big thing I want people to understand if they decide to stop dieting and commit to this type of work is […0.6s] you are also committing to slowing down. You’re committing to leaning back, letting this be simpler, but also healing the hustle in this area of your life.
I think that the biggest surprise a lot of my clients go through is how attached they are to working hard for their results to feel like they deserve them. And I really want you to know that to create results with ease in this area of your life, specifically with weight loss, is gonna feel vulnerable because when you’ve had to work really hard to eat healthy and lose weight in the past, your brain is going to believe that that’s what’s necessary to create it and maintain it, which is probably why you haven’t done it already.
What we’re going to have to do is help you heal this relationship to healthy eating and weight loss to understand you don’t need to diet and you just need to build really simple foundational skills.
But that’s actually where a lot of the healing work and coaching comes in is you adapting to that new normal. Something I tell my clients a lot in our work together is that your results […0.4s] may trigger you along the way because what happens in on your eating habits.
As clients join, they get the coaching, they build the skills and join that community, and then they start losing weight or feeling healthier without a lot of effort.
They don’t feel like they’re doing a lot of things, so then their brain starts freaking out, going, oh my God, this isn’t gonna last. I’m certainly not doing this because I’m not working hard at all. It causes their experience of the result to feel unstable.
But actually, how much more stable is your result when you didn’t have to spend a lot of effort creating it?
I think the biggest […0.5s] piece here that I’m getting at is to stop dieting and to become a naturally healthy eater. I want you to expect a lot of healing, but also, I want you to expect your nervous system to have to acclimate to that.
Because when you have exerted a lot of energy to create a result and then we say, hey, we’re not gonna do that anymore. It’s kind of like getting off the treadmill and you know that feeling when you just wanna keep running.
That’s what it’s like when you do this work foundationally, or if you join my membership, that maybe what it feels like for you.
It’s interesting cause I wrote this question down for our podcast today because I think it could relate to some of you who want to shift from dieting to naturally healthy eating.
It’s the question I get of, do I need to fully […0.5s] heal my relationship with food to lose weight and focus on those things? Because chances are if you’re dieting, maybe you wanna lose weight or just feel […0.5s] better. There’s this transactional relationship we can have to weight loss where we think, […0.4s] oh, if I don’t have this healthy relationship with food or I don’t do these things, then I can’t lose weight.
We think like we’ve got to pay our dues before we can have that result. Again, one of the biggest rites of passage in my work with clients is that you don’t have to pay any dues before your body starts creating the results you want. Your body was just waiting for you to slow down and actually address the root problem.
So sometimes, for example, I’ll have clients come in and say, okay, I’m not here to focus on weight loss. I promise I just wanna heal my relationship with food first, which is more than okay.
By the way, I have many clients who come in like that, and you can too. But I also want you guys to understand that weight loss isn’t something you have to earn, and it’s not transactional. You don’t have to pay your dues before your body starts responding how you want it to. Actually, the moment you begin addressing the root problems and doing that work that allows you to feel better, feel less stress, have lower cravings. Your body’s gonna respond very quickly or really effectively in not a long period of time.
Sometimes that’s what keeps us avoiding the deeper work, is we think Oda do the deeper work means I’ll have to delay the weight loss cause it can’t be about that.
Actually, it’s the opposite in my membership. I really want to create a space where we can talk about weight loss. Prioritize it if that is your goal. If not, it’s okay. But we do talk about that there. And you get to heal your relationship with food at the same time, lower stress, […0.4s] feel better.
So, I hope that makes sense, because it’s a really important thing to address. No, you don’t need to fully heal your relationship with food to lose weight, to bring you some peace of mind. You can just focus on the healing […0.4s] and the weight loss will come to you. That’s the big lesson. You’re not going to have to work hard for it.
I know this was a very open-ended conversation today about transitioning from dieting to naturally healthy eating, but that’s really what I try to do on here. I really just wanna give you guys an open dialogue of how all of this works. I’ve been doing this for many years. I’ve coached hundreds of women from dieters to naturally healthy eaters. And so, I’m very privileged to have this perspective that I can share with all of you. And it just is the joy of my life to be able to make it all a bit easier for you. So, if this connects with you or you want to learn more about me and my work or maybe you wanna work with me directly, you can check out my owner eating habits membership at katrentas.com/membership. It is such a lovely community. There’s a lot of learning there, scale building, and the moment you start, you are going to notice changes.
It’s very, very effective. So, I’d love to have you join me inside. Alright, my friend, I hope you have a great rest of your week, and I’ll talk to you next week. […4.8s]